Yeah, so I work in an office/house. My grandparents live on the second floor and are away for two days. The house used to belong to my uncle and when he passed away in 9/11, we bought it and run an advisory firm out of it. I saw two Television remotes downstairs which is odd because no one really watches TV down here, so I decided to bring the other back upstairs. The master bedroom, TV room, guest bedroom, and bathroom doors are all facing each other when you walk up the stairs to the second-floor landing. As I reached the top I thought I heard voices in the master bedroom so I put the TV remote in the TV room real quick then walked to the door. No one is in the house except me and there wasn't anything on when I left yesterday.

I figured maybe someone left the TV on or the radio while I was gone, maybe my Dad was in here who knows? As soon as my hand touched the doorknob all sound stopped completely and I opened the door to see nothing on and no one around. I walked over to the radio to see if it was on and it wasn't. No alarms were set on it but it does have a radio function. I decided to turn the radio on and see if I could hear it from out of the door to confirm if it was the sound. I walked out of the room and closed the door and the second I did, the radio turned off again. I opened the door to confirm it had turned off and walked back downstairs puzzled.

I don't believe in them either, but that whole thing did freak me out a little. It's like I know that ghosts don't exist but when the timing of me opening and doors is mimicked with the radio either turning off and on it does make me wonder.

My dad walked into the house and the first thing he said to me is, "what's that smell?" He said it smelled like the air that rushes out of a new drill when you pull the trigger.

I don't believe in ghosts specifically, especially not the typical notion of them, but I'm open to evidence of virtually anything. I do think that there's a lot beyond our fleshy, limited senses. Just because our dumb eyeballs can't see it doesn't mean a whole dimension of existence beyond our recognition can't be there, and I find it harder to believe there's not more, honestly.

On the other hand, I think 99.99% of things can be explained within our immediate reality, like what happened in your story, even if we can't pinpoint it ourselves. It seems weird but there's probably a logical reason for it.

Sort of unrelated and ranty, but I think machines could probably pick up on some of the things we can't but it's hard to make something to interpret or measure something we are unaware of, if that makes any sense.

If anyone's ever sat through Ghost Adventures on the travel channel and not cringed at how hard those guys really try to make it look like ghosts are real then I'm at a loss for words.

I think Hollywood and pop culture really ignite those what if questions. If you'd never seen a scary movie or been taught about ghosts, the logical questions behind those unexplained events would be asked more.

There's a lot of evidence to support the brain's ability to produce convincing hallucinations, even in groups, and for the susceptibility of memory to suggestion, and very little evidence to support actual ghosts. I think lots of people are telling the truth about what they saw or experienced (or at least what they remember of it), but I don't think what they saw or experienced actually happened.

I'm a scientist so I'd want to experiment before giving a sufficient answer. Like IAN said, plenty of "ghosts" are explained as auditory or sensory hallucinations. When you are alone, and especially in the dark, your body is hyper aware of every single noise that happens. This hyper awareness could make you believe something or someone is there when there really isn't.

I will tell you the only "strange" "ghostly" experience I've had.

My college is one of the most haunted in America. One of the oldest buildings there is said to be haunted. My gf and I went to that building through the basement door. Now, the basement door is incredibly loud. It's one of these doors:

We entered the hallway and to the right - unknown to us at the time - was a camouflaged door.

We entered the basement - which had a nice lobby area that connected to study rooms. Everything was dark. No lights anywhere except the natural lighting from the windows.

We only stayed for about five minutes until my gf felt spooked and wanted to leave.

We returned the way we came. Now we had been standing in front of that hallway for those entire 5 minutes. We didn't stray far at all. So nobody walked past us. They would especially ask us what we were doing there since we weren't really supposed to be there.

The camouflaged door was open.

My gf FREAKED and ran outside.

I stepped into the room and shouted, "HELLO?"

No answer. It was dark inside and I couldn't see much beyond what looked like a wooden storage space.

My gf quickly returned to grab my arm and drag me outside.

That was - if ever - the only "strange" experience I had with "ghosts". Who opened the door? Nobody answered me. Nobody could have entered that hallway from the inside of the basement without us seeing them.

One explanation is that someone used the outside door to get there. But like I said, that door is extremely loud. Nigh impossible to enter without making noise or letting the air from outside "swoosh" in. It was so quiet there you could have heard a pin drop.

Another likely explanation is that the camouflage door wasn't closed all the way or locked to begin with. It's possible that opening the outside basement door could have let in some wind and shifted the air so that after we walked by, it opened.

I don't personally believe in ghosts, but I do adore logical explanations for them. I find the ability of the human mind to invent these phenomenon more interesting/less terrifying than the idea of them being real.

It's like the Flatwoods Monster and its "sightings" likely just being owls caught at a weird angle.

I'm actually slightly more inclined to believe in aliens than I do ghosts.

I kind of think we have at least been visited once. Then they realized what a **** this place was and left, disinterested.

I want to say it was Neil deGrasse Tyson who said something that kind of blew my mind thinking about it this way. When the U.S. bought the Louisiana Purchase, were any of the animals aware that their land was now under our ownership? Our planet could be in some kind of "galactic territory" but because our intelligence is of no great consequence, we are blissfully unaware of greater events out there.

Aside from thinking Tyson is a pretentious hack, that's basically just the ending to Men in Black. We're objectively aware of our surroundings, I get the comparison but humans and animals are apples and oranges. Aliens would need to be higher beings, godlike, not just smarter than us, to make that comparison work.